2 decades later, bayou beckons A&M

COLLEGE STATION — Receiver Travis Labhart, like his Texas A&M teammates, never has played at LSU. But he already has a solid grasp of Tiger Stadium's intensity — via his living room.

“You see it on TV — you see the camera shaking when it's not supposed to,” Labhart said. “It looks exciting.”

That's certainly one way to put it, according to Aggies president R. Bowen Loftin, who attended A&M games at LSU in the late 1960s as an A&M student.

“We went there every year, and it wasn't very pleasant,” Loftin said. “I vividly remember the team having to wear helmets on the bench, because things like bottles were thrown at them. It's gotten much better now, and the LSU fans I know from that era admit it was pretty extreme in those days.”

No. 12 A&M visits No. 22 LSU for the first time since 1994 with a 2:30 p.m. Saturday kickoff, and the Aggies have earned an earful from their elder brethren concerning what once was A&M's top nonconference rivalry. Labhart, for instance, said an “Old Ag” corralled him in Cracker Barrel to break down why this series has such meaning.

The Aggies and Tigers first met in 1899 in College Station, but the series predominantly has been played in Baton Rouge, including from 1960-75, when LSU won 12 of 16 games. Hard to believe now considering A&M's deep pockets and undergraduate enrollment of more than 50,000, but ...

“We were poor in athletics in those days,” Loftin said. “So LSU paid us to come over there and play.”

LSU leads the all-time series 28-20-3, with all but one of those nonconference contests. The first meeting as Southeastern Conference foes occurred a year ago, when LSU defeated A&M 24-19 in holding eventual Heisman Trophy winner Johnny Manziel in check at Kyle Field.

“There are two different football teams on the field this year,” A&M coach Kevin Sumlin said of what the Tigers did so successfully against A&M in 2012. “They lost a bunch of guys, particularly edge players, defensively, and offensively schematically, we changed as the season went on after that game.”

A&M ventures into the bayou for the first time as an SEC West opponent. The Aggies are without a true rival after exiting the Big 12 in 2012, and LSU makes the most sense for numerous reasons. The universities are only separated by about 340 miles and the Sabine River as a state border, and the fertile recruiting ground of the nation's fourth largest city, Houston, which both programs continuously harvest.

But as far as pushing the idea on the current players that LSU is A&M's new bitter rival? Sumlin said those things take some time.

“Everybody remembers this used to be a heck of a battle, but these guys haven't been over there (to Baton Rouge), unless it was to visit,” said Sumlin, who has never coached in Tiger Stadium. “Right now it's a little bit different for our current players than our former students and fans. (Freshman linebacker) Darian Claiborne couldn't even walk last time we played at LSU.”

Back in the late 1960s, Loftin was in Claiborne's current demographic — a collegian — and annually soaking in A&M's best nonconference rivalry. Loftin, a key player in A&M's move to the SEC, steps down from the presidency in January to return to the classroom and considers this first of many return trips to Baton Rouge a culmination of sorts.

“The universities have a lot of similarities,” Loftin said, adding the cadet corps from both sides plan to take part in activities together this weekend. “That's a neat thing. They're also a great land-grant school with a (longtime) military lifestyle — we've got so much more in common than just a state border separating us.”

Brent Zwerneman is a staff writer for the Houston Chronicle and chron.com covering Texas A&M athletics. He is a graduate of Oak Ridge High School and Sam Houston State University, where he played baseball.

Brent is the author of four published books about Texas A&M, three related to A&M athletics. He’s a four-time winner of APSE National Top 10 writing awards for the San Antonio Express-News, including a second-place finish for breaking the Dennis Franchione “secret newsletter” scandal in 2007.

His coverage of Texas A&M’s move to the SEC from the Big 12 also netted a third-place finish nationally in 2012. Brent met his wife, KBTX-TV news anchor Crystal Galny, in the Dixie Chicken before an A&M-Texas Tech football game in 2002, and the couple has three children: Will, Zoe and Brady.